Damankunyili Gets Clean Water

Earlier this month, two hundred community members in Damankunyili came out to for a water pipe project. Now completed, the inlayed pipe system delivers clean, safe water to the four thousand people.

After two days of arduous digging and the next two days it took to install the pipes, community members were able to use the water. Luckily for Damankunyili, we worked with a private contractor to supply and implement the project, which sped up the process considerably. Conversely, as with the piping project in Dungu, the Government-led initiatives are often delayed with ample red-tape concerns. Quotes and materials are delivered at a snails pace, or not at all; live visits to their offices easily turn into a complex maze of directives, as they send you to different departments all day, avoiding answering your questions directly.

They were overjoyed when the water started flowing from the pipes for the first time. This joyful welcoming of free-flowing water underscores the tenuous and time consuming practices that most in the developing world must undertake to retrieve water from oft’ times less than potable sources. The water gushing from these pipes travel from a treatment plant operated by Ghana Water Company which purifies this most important life-giving substance from a distant source.

Depending on geographical and economic contexts, other methods such as boreholes and wells are used to procure a village with clean water. Boreholes are good because the ground water is usually cleaner and safer than the open water they fetch from ponds and such, but they are often dry because of the lack of ground water. Therefore the pipes were a suitable match for Damankunyili due to their proximity to a treatment facility and other factors. We are delighted to know that some modest funding combined with a community’s passion has resulted in clean water for all for the foreseeable future.